Handoff and resume

A handoff lets someone who was not in the session continue the work without asking. That someone can be a teammate, another agent or the same user next week. The note must hold what the repository does not: what the user decided, what the agent chose alone, and what comes next.

Write a handoff

1. Collect the facts

Run the commands; do not write from memory.

• Date and time with the time zone: date "+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M %Z".
• Session id. Find it in this order and write where it came from:
  1. A session variable of the agent tool, for example CLAUDE_CODE_SESSION_ID in Claude Code or OPENCODE_SESSION_ID in OpenCode.
  2. The transcript file of the session: in Claude Code, the newest ~/.claude/projects/<project folder>/<id>.jsonl; in Codex, the newest ~/.codex/sessions/YYYY/MM/DD/rollout-<time>-<id>.jsonl (its first line, session_meta, has session_id).
  3. If none gives it, write unknown and say what you checked.
• Branches and pull requests: the current branch, its base, the last commit, whether it is pushed, and the open pull requests with their base (git status -sb, git log --oneline -1, gh pr list or the tools of the environment).
• Working tree: uncommitted changes, running servers, temporary files that matter.
• Decisions: ADRs added in the session, and decision logs such as the Q- entries of unattended-run.